I had the pleasure of conducting a video interview with Mari Smith at the Blogworld conference in Los Angeles this past week, where we talked about her newly released book, along with some benefits and tips for online video business-minded people with her strategy of “New Relationship Marketing.”

I had the fortune to read an advance copy of Mari Smith’s book, “The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, and Profitable Network Using the Social Web.” It’s a book I do recommend highly for online video marketers to better understand the “soft skills” involved with social media, and how Mari describes video as being a perfect catalyst.

The following is an excerpt of my interview with Mari Smith, before she had to run off to tryouts for the Scottish-Canadian women’s Olympic basketball team. (Kidding!) I also encourage you to check out her Book Trailer video further down this article.

Video Relationship Marketing – My Video Interview With Mari Smith

So Mari, what are the benefits for online video professionals, and professionally-minded people doing online video, with doing what you refer to as “new relationship marketing?”

Well Grant, it is all about people! And by that I mean people connecting with people. You know the acronyms, B2B, B2C – business to business, business to consumer? Well, what I essentially replace those is with P2P – which is, people-to-people.

What’s exciting is, for me speaking as a Facebook specialist; Facebook changed the landscape of the Internet. It made the ‘Face’ more popular. It’s prevalent, it’s everywhere. Everyone has an avatar, which is exciting. But video is where the avatar comes alive. And you can actually sense and feel into it.

When you see someone on camera in an online video, we get a better feel for a person’s avatar. You can see the body language. You can sense whether the person is being congruent with their message, etcetera. So it’s a way to actually “up” the relationship factor. It’s a way to actually feel more connected and more intimate with the person when they’re speaking on camera, especially live. And then, I think that’s one of the reasons, for instance, that Google Hangouts is so popular – for that “live” element we can now bring into the video recording, too.

You’ve been doing your own online video marketing for years now, and you do apply the very things you teach. So what tip would you have for people who are just getting started with doing online video and want to apply your “new relationship marketing” techniques?

Well, I don’t profess to be a video expert or anything like that. But I do know that when I am making eye contact with the lens, I’m looking beyond the lens; I’m looking through and past it; and I’m imagining that there are people there and that I have a live audience; and that they’re warm, and friendly, and helpful, and connected; and that they want to hear my message; and that they want to befriend, and I want to befriend them.

So it’s just very much a sense of warmth, rather than having a sense of self-consciousness, which I think a lot of people have. Like, “oooh, I don’t want to see myself on camera!” and feel awkward. But it really does come with practice. And especially, when they’re doing web video, or any kind of live video situation where they’re recording, is that even though it’s that tiny little pinpoint of where the webcam is, you make the eye contact with that. It makes a huge difference.

It also seems like for people who are naturally conversationalists, but don’t have the experience of being around a camera and might freeze up, is to have other people with them, or another person with them. So, it’s, they’re not even paying so attention to the camera there, too.

That’s true. You can also talk off-camera, and to another person.

You can catch Mari Smith at MariSmith.com, Facebook.com/MariSmith, MariSmith on Twitter, and now on Google+

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Grant Crowell is a veteran “social video stylist” working in video marketing since 2005. He has worked in the online marketing industry since 1996 providing digital strategies and development to enterprises and entrepreneurs of all sizes, including Video SEO, YouTube marketing, video UX best practices, performance testing, legal issues and ethics. Contact Grant @ http://grantcrowell.com/.